AS David Gilroy waits to be sentenced for the murder of Edinburgh woman Suzanne Pilley, Scotland’s top forensic anthropologist hopes another killer will one day reveal where he dumped his victims.

AS David Gilroy waits to be sentenced for the murder of Edinburgh woman Suzanne Pilley, Scotland’s top forensic anthropologist hopes another killer will one day reveal where he dumped his victims.

It is believed Gilroy buried 38-year-old bookkeeper Suzanne in a remote part of Argyll but he refuses to tell anyone her whereabouts.

He was convicted of murdering Suzanne last week after a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh and will be sentenced next month.

The case echoes the disappearance of Inverness mother-of-two Renee MacRae and her youngest son, Andrew, three, in 1976.

Police are certain they were murdered. But, despite the biggest police excavation in UK history, the location of the bodies is a mystery.

Forensic scientist Professor Sue Black, who helped in the search for their bodies, will not rest until the case is solved.

She said: “We excavated Dalmagarry quarry. We didn’t find her. I got a letter from Renee’s sister, which read, ‘I know you wanted to find her. Every time you look it raises my hopes but don’t feel bad that you didn’t find her’.

“That’s what gets to you, when you fail. I don’t think we did anything wrong. I think she was there but the bodies were moved to a secondary site. There is at least one person who knows and if they had any decency, before they hit their deathbed, they’d tell the family where Renee is. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

“I want to solve it. I want to find her because I need to put it to bed. Those are the kind of things that haunt me, the things you didn’t bring to a conclusion.

“Talk to any senior police officer and the ones that bug them are the ones that aren’t solved. It doesn’t haunt you because it was so horrific, it haunts you because you have failed.”

Operating out of Dundee ­University, Prof Black is the world’s leading expert in disaster victim identification.

She worked in the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings of 2005, the Kosovo genocides of 1998-1999 and the Asian tsunami in 2004.

She hopes to train others around the world in the techniques, which have made her department the best in their field, at a mortuary being built at the university where she is Professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology.

The Million for a Morgue campaign aims to raise £1million for the mortuary with the help of 10 top crime writers.

“It is a tough sell,” said Prof Black. “You can’t go to Tesco and rattle a bucket. But for a crime writer it’s perfect. I know Val McDermid and suggested the idea. She said that crime writers have millions of readers and can donate small amounts of money.

“Val got nine other authors to come on board, so we have 10 of the most phenomenal crime writers, including Stuart MacBride, Jeffery Deaver and Val, offering prizes.

“They are all competing and whoever has raised the most money for us will have the mortuary named after them.”

Prof Black, 50, said: “I get a tremendous sense of pride when I think that every UK police officer responding to a mass fatality event is trained by the Dundee route.

“They were allowed to practise with real bodies. There is no ­substitute. If you are down in the tunnels in the London bombing, there is only one way to train for lifting and moving a dead body.”

While the MacRae case is one she is desperate to solve, she has helped hundreds to find peace following the death of their loved ones.

She said: “There was a situation in Kosovo where a family were coming into a town on a tractor and trailer.

“A rocket-propelled grenade took out the trailer. Dad was driving the tractor but everybody on the trailer died. His wife, her sister, their mother and their eight children.

“Under cover of darkness, he came back and gathered together the bits. He only ever found one side of his wife, the bottom half of his 12-year-old daughter. He dug a hole to keep them away from the dogs that would have used them as food.

“We came along 12 months later. We asked to use the grave as an indictment site and to exhume what he had buried to use against Slobodan Miloševi?. He said, ‘I will be so grateful to you if you would. My concern is that God won’t be able to find them.’

“I separated the adults out easily. The six-month-old boy was still intact in his romper suit. I had the two-year-old, the four-year-old, the six-year-old, the eight-year-old, the 12-year old and the two 14-year-old twin boys to separate.

“We were able to give him 12 body bags, 11 with named members of his family in and a final bag we couldn’t separate.”

Despite the horrors she sees, the mother-of-three, switches off after work.

“Some scenarios are more unpleasant than others but I have never lost sleep over it. It is the living that scare you, not the dead.

“When you’re in Kosovo and snipers are firing and rocket-propelled grenades are going off, then you’re scared.”

Agony goes on for tragic John Coughlan's family

THE family of a murdered man, whose body is still missing, have told of their agony over memories stirred by the Suzanne Pilley trial.

Like Suzanne, John Coughlan’s body was buried in a remote rural location by his killer.

But after more than 36 years he hasn’t been found, despite the killer admitting his crime after a bizarre “voice from the grave” helped snare him.

Last night, one of John’s family, who didn’t wish to be named, said, “Seeing reports of the Pilley trial has brought it all back.”

John Coughlan’s wife Eleanor died never knowing what happened to his remains and his brother and two sisters are still in the dark.

Michael Topham admitted the killing and a retired policeman who cracked the case said it made Scottish legal history.

He said: “Topham confessed after believing he was being taunted by his victim – over the radio. It was a legal first in 1980 when Topham admitted murder, even though John’s body was never found.”

Similar to the Suzanne Pilley case, police searched a forest for a grave but they failed to find John’s body.

The ex-cop recalled: “In 1980, we arrested a man with what we thought could be stolen jewellery. Trying to cut a deal, he said he could give us information about a murder. He told us he’d been working with Topham, who was a tradesman.

“Topham had been listening to a radio programme about séances and the afterlife when he was suddenly so shocked he fell over. He broke down and confessed to the colleague he thought he’d heard the voice of a man he’d murdered.”

The killer later admitted that in 1975 he’d used a hammer and a window weight to batter to death Blantyre man John, who was 57.

Caretaker John had caught Topham stealing paint. Topham, then 35, said he’d buried John in Alltcailleach Forest on the A93 between Braemar and Crathie. But a search couldn’t find the grave.

The ex-cop said: “The official story we put out was that Topham was nabbed because he’d drunkenly admitted his crime in a pub. But that was to protect the informant.”

Topham was released from prison in 1991 and died eight years later.

?The wife of killer David Gilroy was keeping a low profile yesterday. After visiting him in jail the day before with her kids – as our sister paper the Sunday Mail reported – Andrea Gilroy, 42, was not answering her door in Silverknowes, Edinburgh.

A pal said: “She wanted to spend some time with the kids after all they have been through.”